I just discovered O’Reilly Labs Code Search. This is a search engine that locates code in “nearly 700 O’Reilly books.” For example, you can search for “ajax” and you will get a Web page that lists code that has been identified with the word “ajax.” There is a one-line string from the book that contains the keyword searched. They give you the book name, author, and page number, in addition to other things. You can view the code by clicking on “Full View.” There is also a “Similar Code” at the bottom right of the code.

This is really useful because I own a lot of O’Reilly computer books. It is really time-consuming to try to track down some code I vaguely recall. Of course, this is to sell books, as it helps to identify which books have the kinds of in-depth details that a programmer often needs.